>Here's something I don't like about the Oly combat system. I didn't>like it in Ancient Oly and I still don't like it.

I agree.

[examples illustrating how repeated attacking and the difficulty of
fleeing makes it almost impossible to avoid an intelligent attack
deleted]

>The result is that it is very difficult to flee from battle.>Occasionally you'll see someone accomplish it, but for the most part>battles are to the death.

True.

>I don't have anything useful or constructive to say about this. Maybe>the system is fine as it is, but I don't like it. It seems to me that>there ought to be some reasonable, realistic chance for survivors to>flee from a battle.

Here are some ideas:

1) Have an "EVADE" command that takes 1 week to execute. The noble
performing the command (who must be at the top of a stack or the owner
of a structure) can perform no other actions during that time but any
attacks against that noble's stack automatically fail since the noble
is using their full effort to stay away from the attacker. A special
combat skill should let a noble attack an evading target with a chance
of success. Optionally, evasion itself could be a combat skill. This
weighs the benefit of not getting hit against the penalty of not being
able to move (or do anything else). A variation of this could be
triggered if a noble flees combat.

2) Make it so that attacks against players do not automatically
succeed. Locations are a big place and a stack must actually corner
another stack to attack. The odds of succeeding would depend on combat
skills, the size of each stack, and perhaps the speed of movement.
Yes, a unit could perform repeated attacks but at 1 day per attack,
it would take time.